Insight into the challenge of the Sexual Harrasment Legislation in Uganda

The main challenges with the Sexual Harassment legislation in Uganda is that: ·

The law envisages for only institutions with over 25 employees to put SH prevention measures in place. The majority of workplaces /businesses in Uganda are in the informal sector, and are small and medium size businesses, most of which do not have more than 25 employees. The current legislation would therefore not apply to them. · The legislation by defining a workplace as one with over 25 employees, by implication narrows the definition of workplaces to formal spaces. This leaves out the majority of workplaces that are in the informal sector; which employ a huge number of women. Furthermore, there are scores of businesses, even in the formal sector that have less than 25 employees.

This arbitrary threshold also suggests that sexual harassment only because a severe enough problem that merits resolution when it affects employees in a large work environment. · Whilst the Employment Act and regulations provide the legal framework to address SH, the structures and resources required to ensure enforcement are inadequate. ·

The Employment Act defines a perpetrator of SH as an employee who has authority over the person alleging SH or has authority in the workplace. This definition suggests that someone of the same rank cannot perpetrate SH against a co-worker because they presumably do not have power over them and assumes that power can only be acquired through position of leadership. Imbalance in power relations between genders means that men in the same rank as women, and sometimes even a lower rank will have the power and by extension the entitlement to sexually harass women.

It should be noted that in June 2019, recognizing that sexual harassment is incompatible with decent work, the ILO adopted Convention 190 on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work to provide a global standard for violence free workplaces. The Convention expands the scope of the world of work and by the same stroke, the protections that workers enjoy work taking into consideration violations occurring in the course of, linked with or arising out of work.9 This offers protection to women in the informal sector against sexual harassment in contrast to Uganda’s current employment law whose scope can be interpreted to be limited to the formal sector. The ratification and domestication of this convention is critical to inform review of the current legal framework for expansion of the definition of workplaces, and to specifically provide for protection of women in the informal sector.

We should continue to do advocacy over the unfair legislations that do not provide comprehensive solutions to problems that have kept women in bondage.

Thank you Wakina mama for this study